Chapter 11
THOUGHTS ON THE FUTURE OF CIVILIZATION
* Alienation * Principles have Consequences * Freedom/Slavery schizophrenia * Financial Manipulation * Standard of Living * Dependency * Dictatorship American Style * The Alternative of Freedom * Cultural Value-deprivation * Inheritance * Conservation - Environmentalism
* Alienation
Everyone is in agreement that something is wrong with the world.
Everybody senses that something monstrous is attacking the culture of
America, but nobody can figure out exactly what it is.
The reason civilization is declining may not be loss of resources, or the
uncontrolled obsession to reproduce, or the decline of literacy, or the
continuing increase in government tyranny, or any such thing. Those may be
mere effects, while the real cause may be a collective subconscious revolt
against this steel, concrete and machinery. Since we evolved among forests,
do we dare cut down every tree on earth? The thousands of visible stars that
defined the night sky for our ancestors are now too washed out for urban
eyes to see. Our loss of the velvet night is profound. Not only have we lost
the stars, we have lost even the night itself. Here in central Wyoming, I
live in one of the least populated regions of the country. Even so, I must
trek well up into the mountainous wilderness before I can experience a
darkness that is not encroached upon by artificial lights. Along with
darkness, we have lost silence. The incessant and inescapable clamor of
modern civilization is pounding continually against our eardrums, hammering
its way inexorably into our subconscious minds. Surely this must have
similar consequences to the Newspeak phenomena that I discussed in Chapter
2.
See reference
There has been a social loss also. Many people exist like zombies,
refusing to run the risk of interacting emotionally or intellectually with
other people, but this leaves them with a vacant feeling in their hearts and
minds so they switch on the TV and live vicariously, watching some actor
having a make-believe experience when they no longer experience anything for
themselves. This enables them to run no risk of being hurt but to experience
emotions they are otherwise missing. But this counterfeit practice fills the
need for emotional expression only until the next day, when it has to be fed
again. Before TV, people had no phoney out. They had to get their emotional
satisfaction from relating to other real live people. But today they have
become a gum-chewing, bag-rattling crowd of couch potatoes. A crowd that
wants its entertainment overplayed so that it won't have to think about
what's going on. A crowd whose senses are so dulled that its laughter comes
out of a can. A value-deprived crowd that doesn't want to reach OUT for a
feeling or a meaning. It wants to be clubbed in the head with the meaning,
so that it doesn't have to reach. A situation which hardly predisposes to
virtue.
Maybe man can survive on earth this way, but his dreams can't. There is
too much "civilization" and it has crowded out all the dreams. And there's
no LIFE left for anyone. Just day-to-day survival. Average life in America:
you're born, you go to school, you grow into an adult and join the rat-race,
you get a job to survive and pay taxes, then you die.
Happiness and beauty are psychological necessities. That's why we
experience beauty in such natural-world phenomena as sunsets and rainbows,
and why we experience happiness in successful value-achievement. But it must
be authentic happiness--the brain is a natural, not artificial, organ. Many
people have very little authentic happiness. There is a difference between
the joy of creative achievement and the mere pleasure of release from work.
TV watching is not authentic. Nor is the mad scramble to earn a living while
focused not on genuine productivity but on extraneous things like keeping up
with the Joneses or keeping your boss satisfied.
Nathaniel Branden once commented on "the biological forces deep within
our organism that speak to us in a wordless language we have barely begun to
decipher." I rather suspect that it is more likely the case that we have
forgotten how to decipher their language. The trappings of civilization have
cozened humans to sever their direct links with fundamentally important
values and "the biological forces deep within our organism" that impel us to
the achievement of those values. Thus we live in what Rand has so aptly
described as a condition of "cultural value-deprivation."
* Principles have Consequences
To understand the state of a society, one must discover the extent to
which a given philosophy has been institutionalized and has penetrated the
spirits of its citizens. On this basis, one can then explain a society's
history--and forecast its future. This is what makes intelligible the fact
of Hitler's rise, and the inevitability of America's decline.
If you have been taught--and accept--that oppression is proper, then you
will participate in a form of gradual social suicide. You will, as a matter
of course, help to spread within your society the attitudes that must be
nourished in order to accept oppression. (They are, after all, your own
attitudes.) As a result, a greater and greater percentage of the population
will come to embrace social institutions that eventuate in the self-
destruction of society. (Thus the continual victories of collectivist
politics.)
For example: Starting with the premise that sacrifice is a fundamental
requirement of human existence, it is inevitable that laws will be passed
mandating sacrifices. The unwillingness of an individual to accept the
sacrifices that "the law" demands will be perceived as a violation of
civilized decency. Thus even if a man starts out as benevolent, a consistent
application of the collectivist principle of sacrifice will drive him,
against all his better feelings, to accept the necessity of violating
individual rights. Here you see the indirect--and largely unrecognized--
influence of philosophy on human existence.
Principles do count. If we destroy the principles by which we live
through cowardice, expediency, fear, or any other reason, we will destroy
the basis of our existence.
Imagine passengers riding on a train which, they have been told, is
taking them to a distant utopia. At first all seems well, but as the train
moves closer to its destination, the scene outside the windows becomes
ominously bleak. Finally, the passengers catch sight of the destination.
Instead of the utopia, they see starving children, chain gangs, and, in the
distance, the barbed wire and sentry posts of a concentration camp.
Frightened and angry, they attempt to negate their forward motion by running
back INSIDE THE TRAIN. The attempt, of course, is hopeless; to save
themselves, the passengers must get off the train altogether. In the same
manner, the moral code of altruism will carry society to tyranny, regardless
of short-term backpedalling. The only hope is to fully reject altruism and
enable man's right to exist for his own sake.
* Freedom/Slavery schizophrenia
It is prerequisite to mental health that a man be in spiritual contact
with his own knowledge of reality. (See PSE chapter 6.) Thus an ignorant
man, whose conceptual view of the world is limited, can live in a successful
state of mental health if he will just recognize and act according to the
view of reality he does have. However, a man with greater knowledge MUST
recognize and act according to his advanced view or else he will be
neurotic--by being out of spiritual contact with the reality he perceives.
A man living under a totalitarian government, who has no real knowledge
of what freedom is, will suffer a condition of enslavement, but if he does
not misperceive his situation, then his only burden is that of being a
slave.
Citizens of the United States also suffer a condition of enslavement, but
they have been taught that their nation was established in freedom, and that
their ancestors were free, and all their lives they have been led to believe
that they themselves are free. Devoutly but falsely believing themselves to
be free, they refuse to acknowledge the fact of their enslavement. But the
reality of that fact is inescapable. Once they are released from the school
system and enter mainstream society, these slaves--having been thoroughly
indoctrinated by the government with the notion that America is a free
society and that they are free people--immediately encounter such coercive
phenomena as: selective service, driver's licenses, vehicle registration
(read a New Hampshire license plate: "Live free or die"), income tax,
property tax, business licenses, and the myriad regulations that control all
aspects of their daily lives. Thus they have a double burden: the
enslavement itself and also the psychological effects of the hypocritical
discord between the reality they live in and the falsehood of their beliefs.
The polite voice of a policeman is nothing more than a mocking, deceitful
expression of tyrannous authority--the arrogant inhumanity of power--even if
the policeman truly believes he is being polite! The fact of government's
omnipotence over the individual renders his politeness a mere hypocrisy. In
fact, the truant officer is a kidnapper; the tax collector is a thief; the
soldier is a murderer. This all-pervasive hypocrisy also contributes greatly
to the spread of dishonest behavior among the populace: most people have
decided the system stinks because it is corrupt, in one way or another, so
why should ordinary folks punish themselves by always being honest?
Is it any wonder that the subconscious attempt of a mind to integrate the
firm belief in freedom with the inescapable facts of slavery should result
in massive psychological distress? Enough to drive one to drink--or
addiction of an even more self-destructive nature--or even suicide. The
victim has chopped himself into pieces which he struggles never to connect--
and then he sees no reason why his life is in ruins. Not knowing precisely
what has happened to his life nor who to blame, he sees only that the
quality of life has shockingly deteriorated, and that life is now so beset
by apprehension for the future, difficulty in remaining solvent, and actual
physical danger, that it is hardly worth living any more. His life has been
a slow slide into self-administered anesthesia, a bleak life, the
frustration of which is like a slow-acting acid on his soul. He survives by
becoming less and less sensitive, until he no longer cares even for himself.
This is the cause of his apathy and lack of emotion. One can respond
emotionally only to something for which one cares.
And it is immensely difficult for him to fight this situation: having had
his concept of freedom thoroughly depraved, he lacks the derivative concepts
needed for active resistance to tyranny.
When I hear someone say that Americans are free, I consciously and
explicitly recognize that statement to be false. I also know subconsciously
that it is false. Thus there is no conflict between my conscious mind and my
subconscious mind. When you hear the same statement, you consciously and
explicitly accept it as true. Your subconscious mind, however, knows--
because of its inability to integrate the contrary observations you have
made--that the statement is false. In order to avoid the psychologically
devastating (or at least distressing) process of seeing your most cherished
beliefs refuted, you must suppress the knowledge in your subconscious mind--
so that it will not conflict with your consciously held convictions--and
accept only a selected subset of your observations. You must divide your
mind into two parts: the set of observations that you consciously accept,
and that other, disturbing, set of observations that contradict your
conscious beliefs. As time passes, this alienation process becomes more
pervasive, as you come to deny a larger and larger body of your
observations, and it becomes more intense, as you force yourself to deny a
more and more important body of observations. Since a basic function of the
human mind is the process of integration, this continual segregation process
results in a growing nervous tension, as your subconscious mind tries harder
and harder to integrate these two bodies of knowledge. Eventually there may
occur an explicit recognition of this conflict, accompanied by a emotional
trauma proportional to the amount and degree of segregation that had
previously occcurred. The rage and frustration resulting from this trauma
(and/or from the sudden destruction of your most cherished beliefs) may so
seriously derange your mental processes that you drive your pickup truck
through the front door of a restaurant and kill a dozen people.
A man can accept enslavement--after all, most people throughout history
have lived in a state of enslavement, and they have accepted this (although
in many cases they did not like it at all). But what a man CANNOT do is
believe that he is free while simultaneously realizing that he is a slave.
It is not possible to integrate a contradiction. Any attempt to do so will
make you insane. This is a major reason why half the hospital beds in
America contain people who have mental, not physical, illnesses. Being
unable to resolve the conflict between their environment and their
upbringing, they wind up in mental institutions. It is also a major
contributor to the widespread cultural derangement, and its accompanying
violence, that so plague modern America.
Facts are facts, whether you believe in them or not. They are immutable.
The thing that depends on your cognizance of them is not the reality of the
facts, but the effectiveness of your behavior--and your mental health.
* Financial Manipulation
When you manufacture products, you add value to raw materials, and you
literally create wealth. But America is turning more and more to a different
economic perspective: Americans make money now by paper manipulation, the
error of which is bound to catch up to us because paper profits don't
reflect real wealth. The fascination with Wall Street and junk bonds is so
misplaced as to be crazy.
Instead of goods, services, and work--realities of the physical world--
Keynes' economic realities are mere symbols: money and credit.
The advice of economic counselors is usually very good in times of
affluence when the game is played with intangibles such as dollars, stocks,
bonds, etc. These things have value in the same sense that bubble gum cards
have great value among children. But a dollar is no more money than a
hatcheck is a hat. Sooner or later you've got to have a real hat.
Contrast the great fortunes of the early 20th century with those of the
late 20th century. Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Ford made vast fortunes, but
these were productive fortunes: they produced steel, oil and automobiles.
The great fortunes of the 1980s resulted not from production, but from
manipulation of financial assets. Never have so many made so much in return
for producing so little.
The world no longer has the patience for long-term investments. The vast
increase of government interference in the market has resulted in a general
economic thrust away from far-sightedness and the building of capital for
the future, and toward destructive short-term looting of the stock of
capital. Political Man is narrow-minded and short-sighted. He loots
resources for short-term benefit. It is capital ownership in the free market
that encourages Economic Man to look to the future, to safeguard resources
in order to maintain their long-term value on the market.
The increasing scope of government's control and its associated transfers
of property rights from private individuals to government or to political
interest groups undermines the private property arrangements that support a
free market system. This process creates considerable uncertainty about the
future value of those private rights that have not yet been taken. When
resource owners are relatively uncertain about their continued ownership of
those resources, they tend to use them up relatively rapidly and have less
incentive to enhance future production capabilities. Resources are then
overused and underproduced.
* Standard of Living
I recently came across a prediction made by futurists back in the 1950s:
"People in the 1980s will be commuting from their rooftops via personal
helicopters, filing flight plans instead of fighting freeways."
I got to thinking about this and said "Why not? There is no technological
reason why personal helicopters are not widely available, or perhaps small
VTOL aircraft." This led me to a related line of inquiry--a comparison of
the American standard of living of the 1950s with that of the 1980s.
Has it been going up? Down? Remaining about the same? Or is this a
spurious question? It might be better to ask "Whose standard of living?"
Some people do better, some do worse. Is it even possible to measure an
aggregate "standard of living"?
And what is the difference between the state of the economy and the
standard of living of the people? I think there is a difference. I can
conceive of a healthy, robust and growing national economy in which most
people have a rather low standard of living (compared with what we have
today). This would be true of America in the first half of the 19th century.
The country was free, the economy was growing rapidly and uninhibitedly, but
the people were starting from a rather low standard of living. On the other
hand, during the 1930s most people were materially better off than their
ancestors had been a century previously--but the nation's economy was in
dismal condition.
I surmise that "state of the economy" could be measured in absolute
terms, but "standard of living" is only comparative.
My tentative conclusion is that people have more material wealth today,
but they have to work more to get it. So is their standard of living higher
or lower? I don't know.
Think back to the fifties (if you are old enough to do so), when an
American family of three or four could live comfortably on the income earned
by the father, the sole breadwinner of the family. That father could own a
house, raise a family, and send the kids to college, all on a single
paycheck. Today, however, one income alone will usually not suffice for a
comfortable living for such a family. Both parents must work, and still many
families can't even afford a house. In a family of my acquaintance, the
father, the mother, and the teenage daughter (this is the entire family) all
work full-time jobs. And I don't think this is at all unusual. The dollar
buys less, everything is more expensive. People struggle just to hold on to
what they have, and can't seem to get ahead.
Here are some data from the 1992 edition of the US Statistical Abstract:
Families with working wives 1950:24% 1991:58%
Families with working children 1960:6% 1982:12%
Percent of total population employed 1960:29% 1990:44%
Here is a comment by Harry Browne, from his book HOW YOU CAN PROFIT FROM
THE COMING DEVALUATION. (Published in August, 1970):
Can you imagine being asked to pay $3500 for a Volkswagen?
That's stretching your imagination quite a bit, I realize.
And yet that day may not be very far away.
And here is an item from NEWSWEEK magazine, August 29, 1977:
After 28 years in the US market, the homely little
Volkswagen Beetle is on its way out. Last week, after sales
of 5 million models, Volkswagen stopped shipping them here.
Since 1968 the Beetle's base price has raced from $1699 to
$3699.
No matter how much more wealth per capita improving technology makes
possible, it seems there is always something to soak up the surplus and
condemn ordinary people to a lifetime of labor. And then at the end,
Greenspan & Co. recently (in 1983) arranged to knock two years off your
retirement by increasing the Social Security starting age from 65 to 67. No
matter how much productivity increases, people never seem to work less, only
differently. So if they don't reap the fruits, who does? Who sucks up the
surplus?
For every worker there is at least one drone--someone who "works" for
government or who is being supported by government, so you are working
enough to support at least two people.
People today have a lot of material goods, but they have a crushing
burden of debt and very little equity. In 1950, about one-third of the
after-tax income of the average family was used to pay off debts. By 1980
that proportion had risen to three-quarters. America is a nation that has
forgotten how to finance growth through earnings rather than debt.
In the early 1960s, interest payments made by American corporations were
5% of their cash flow. By 1989 that had risen to more than 20%. This makes
them more vulnerable than in the past to an economic downturn. If falling
sales hit their cash flow, and many find themselves unable to service their
debts, a wave of bankruptcies could follow in a domino effect as one
company's inability to pay reduces another's cash flow even further.
A key to the continued existence of any business is its ability to
generate a stream of profits sufficient to finance future capital
expenditures for replacement and growth. Small or large, it doesn't matter--
this fundamental economic requirement must be satisfied. But the profits of
American businesses are more and more being eaten up by interest payments
and government regulations. This bodes ill indeed for future prosperity.
Throughout history some nations gain power while others lose it. The
evidence shows that nations that pursue policies of respect for an
independent economic sphere--private property, the market economy, sanctity
of contracts, low taxes, sound money, free trade, and unrestricted
experimentation with technological advancements--tend to grow the fastest,
establishing national bases of tremendous economic power. But this economic
power always tempts governments to seize control over it, so they can pursue
policies of military expansion and foreign adventurism or, in general, for
the basic purpose of aggrandizing governmental institutions. But these
policies become parasitic on the very forces that led to the economic growth
in the first place; nations become militarily and bureaucratically top-heavy
and overextended, saddled with debt and high taxes, and ever resistant to
further change and necessary economic adjustments. In the end, such nations
are usually wrecked by a growing disparity between statist ambitions and
economic realities.
We can see this happening in America in those areas (especially inner-
city ghettos) where there is a growing similarity of life to that of some
Third World nations where all attempts of enterprising people to rise in
life and make something of themselves are systematically squelched by the
reigning bureaucracy.
For the last hundred years in America, statist intervention tried to
preserve and even extend an industrial economy, while scuttling the very
requirements of freedom and the free market which in the long run are
necessary for its survival. For decades, statist intervention could wreak
its depredations without causing clear and evident crises and dislocations,
because the free-market industrialization of the nineteenth century had
created a vast cushion of "fat" in the economy against such depredations.
But now statism has advanced so far and been in power so long that the
cushion is worn thin; the "reserve fund" created by laissez-faire has been
depleted. So that now, whatever the government does brings about an instant
negative feedback--ill effects that are evident to all--and what had been a
problem solvable by free-market pricing and advancing technology has become
a complex puzzle the resolution of which will require the complete
dismantling of an all-pervasive system. But can the dismantling occur
without catastrophe? Consider just one aspect of it: If all government
subsidies were ended tomorrow morning, without any changes in the economy
having been effected first, there would be much suffering, and perhaps even
starvation, for those on welfare.
The government is very cunning, and the economy of America is very
resilient. But though the government may be very flexible, the principles it
is violating are not--and sooner or later the causes being implemented will
have their inexorable effects. The people I really feel sorry for are the
little children--who will have to live with those effects as they become
adults.
* Dependency
The parameters of any social system are continually changing. Government
power is one of the most significant of these changes. Major changes are a
normal part of life. Their impacts, however, have intensified. Or perhaps it
is the destructive impact of government's responses to calamities that has
intensified, as government power has grown. The only social systems that can
persevere are those capable of modifying themselves to accomodate changes.
But rigidly-structured government institutions are relatively inflexible as
compared with decentralized, anarchic societies. Thus the greater
prosperity, growth, and security of the freer societies as opposed to the
poverty, stagnation, and uncertainty of life in the tyrannies. Where people
depend on government, they are very susceptible to uncontrollable and
arbitrary changes in their situation, changes which it may be difficult or
impossible to accomodate.
In terms of systemic development, America's present food-supply system is
the most complex and all-encompassing that has ever existed, thus America is
in a uniquely vulnerable situation. Here are the percentages of the USA
population living in rural areas and selling more than $1000 (in 1980
dollars) of farm products each year:
1920 30%
1930 25%
1940 23%
1950 15%
1960 9%
1970 5%
1980 3%
1990 2%
2000 .7%
Throughout history, the vast majority of famines have occurred in
societies in which well over 90% of the population were farmers. Even so,
those famines were disasters. How infinitely worse would be a failure of the
American food-supply system today, with so few of us being in a position to
provide our own food. Not only are Americans off the land, they have been
off for generations and now have neither the knowledge nor the ability to
get back on. Thus any systemic collapse that interrupts the food-supply
would result in a famine of unprecedented scale.
This same conclusion can be drawn in regard to other "life support"
systems in America. There are numerous examples of the frightening
dependency Americans have on fragile systems. Millions who are now on Valium
or other narcotic tranquilizers might go insane if their supply were cut
off. A severe disruption in the flow of petroleum-based fuel would have
catastrophic consequences on life in America. As would a failure in the
major electric power grids. A simple edict of the government, a terrorist
bomb, or a collapse in the value of the dollar is all it might take to
severely disrupt such things as the supply of medicine, electricity,
propane, petrol or anything else (especially food) which is centrally
controllable in its production and distribution and therefore susceptible to
government interference. If the electric power went off in Wyoming in the
middle of winter, people would die. (A few years ago it did just that for
four days--and indeed, some people did die.) This possibility should scare
everybody--but hardly anybody even thinks about it.
My idea of anarchism is not just opposition to a centralized State, but
the advocacy of as much economic decentralization as is feasible for a
civilized life. For example, I would like to see a solar panel on
everybody's roof, and the consequent extinction of the power companies. Not
that I have anything against the power companies (except, of course, when
they have a legal monopoly on utility provision), but I am opposed to the
institutionalized life-support dependency that they represent.
* Dictatorship American Style
The Nazis and the Communists achieved their power not by destroying, but
by subverting, the capacity of their citizens to implement values. They
simply used propaganda to swindle the citizens into implementing values that
the governments had chosen. Today in America it is realized that any similar
attempt would soon be recognized, by comparison with the tactics of the
Nazis, and rejected. So today's American totalitarians must use another
means to accomplish their ends--a different kind of swindle: Newspeak. Thus
has been taken the next step in philosophical degradation: the individual's
capacity to implement values has not merely been subverted--it has been
destroyed.
An understanding of the subversion process leads readily to a
comprehension of the Nazi and Communist systems. But what of a system in
which individuals are bereft of the motive to achieve any values at all? For
their future I can see only a slide--or collapse--into total chaos. If a
dictator were to rise up and command them, would they obey? This problem is
compounded in America, where the "dictator" is not a value-oriented
individual but is a bureaucracy itself comprised of value-deprived
individuals. No centralized, cohesive, value-oriented structure can arise
from the American populace. I am inclined to prognosticate a future for
America not of dictatorial tyranny, but of a chaos in which barbarians will
overrun and destroy civilization. Not the sort of barbarians from without
who overran the Roman civilization, but a new sort of barbarians from
within--the illiterate, non-cognitive, valueless denizens of America's inner
cities, who will rise up in their unfocused outrage and destroy everything.
The American political structure does not have the potential to function
cohesively in a dictatorial manner such as the Nazi government did; it
contains too many disparate and mutually conflicting subgroups.
Through the system of checks and balances the Founding Fathers
established a political system whose operation is independent of the moral
character of any of its temporary officials--a system impervious to
political subversion. However, there are economic ramifications to this
idea: whereas the Nazis and the Communists channeled their nations' economic
power into the lifeblood of centralized government, the American government
is merely dissipating the nation's economic power into porkbarrel projects
proposed by the myriad of competing federal and state bureaucracies. It is
much more likely that all these will collapse from economic anemia than that
they will coalesce into a centralized tyranny.
Along with this, voters in America will keep on clamoring for the
government to violate the laws of nature. Perhaps the most significant
difference between the American government and a totalitarian government is
that a totalitarian government can have a form of institutionalized
intelligence, but the American form of government is absolutely brainless. A
dictatorial government at least has the unifying mind of the dictator behind
it. A democracy has no mind behind it. For this reason it is unlikely to
become a centralized tyranny, for it cannot select and implement a unifying
central theme.
Even with the imposition of martial law, could the FedGov deploy enough
troops to control the entire country? And do so without the consent of the
local authorities, who control the local police? As a local policeman once
remarked to me: "The Lander police are not governed by the Supreme Court,
but by the laws of the State of Wyoming. We do not change our behavior until
we get a ruling from the State government."
Before a dictator could arise in America, the present political structure
would have to be largely or completely abolished.
What would another civil war be like in this country if the participants
were not divided into geographical factions? Maybe like the Spanish Civil
War? But that was a strongly ideological war, and my contention here is that
Americans lack ideology, so who would fight? Real power is institutionally
dissipated into a large number of separate foci and there is no provision
for its centralization.
There is one, and only one, group in America that comprises a potentially
effective totalitarian entity: the police. Their communally held goal is to
exercise total dominance and control over the citizens. If, in the
implementation of this, they can obtain the full cooperation of the other
agencies of government, America may become literally a police state, with
the rest of government functioning primarily as a supportive substructure
for the police. It will probably not be the sort of centrally organized
police state that is common throughout the world, because the American
police are not centrally controlled, but they are coordinated and
cooperative.
And speaking of a "totalitarian entity," I must remark that the
"Department of Homeland Security" scares the holy hell out of me! I would
remind you of the initials RSHA, which stood for Reichssicherheitshauptamt
which, freely translated, would be: "Reich Homeland Security
Administration." It was formed in 1939, incorporating the Gestapo, the
Criminal Police and the Security Service (S.D.). During the following years
its authority increased to encompass many horrible things, including the
administration of the concentration camps.
As of 2005, the primary explicitly stated goal of the DHS is to gain
control over all the country's means of transportation. What will be next? I
see the DHS as being a means by which the federal government will, by
suitable manipulation of its purse strings, centralize its control over all
the police forces in America. Then we really will have a police state!
Since the time of Hitler and Stalin, our age has lacked easily
identifiable villains of stature commensurate with their crimes against
humanity. No longer the transgressions of exceptionally cruel and notable
individuals, evil has been bureaucratized by the twentieth-century State and
made the charge of relatively faceless functionaries, small in character and
comprehension. Who knows the names of those who burned little children in
Philadelphia and Waco? Throughout the modern world, natty figures in suits
or uniforms have carried out monstrous suppressions, uprootings, and
exterminations without entering the pages of history as striking despots.
Considered individually, their outstanding characteristic is their
mediocrity. There are no large-scale villains anymore, only colorless
bureaucrats competing for common power and common booty. So much evil is
done by people with innocent faces.
There now flourishes a class of State-funded social "scientists" whose
professional status requires an ideology to justify the continuance of State
funds. Their work consists in discovering and defining particular "social
problems" which will become the material for the furtherance of their
activity. An army of jailers, social workers, psychologists, therapists,
sociologists, counselors, and other petty bureaucrats have swollen the
payrolls of government and public institutions. In order to justify their
budgets, they have had to postulate ever newer and more threatening social
pathologies from which they can claim to protect us. More and more areas of
life have been criminalized at the same time as the techniques of
surveillance, interrogation and repression have been extended, refined and
made more powerful. For all these groups the "discoveries" of child abuse,
sexual abuse and drug abuse have been godsends. And each has benefited from
the others' legitimization of an attitude of repressive intolerance for any
non-conformist belief or practice.
For example: Homosexuality is the name we give to the preference for
sexual intercourse with members of one's own sex. Would calling preference
for marriage with members of one's own race and religion "homoraciality" and
"homoreligiosity" make them mental diseases? Would the members of the
American Psychiatric Association vote on whether or not they are mental
diseases? (See Chapter 7 * The War On Drugs)
See reference
One of the most scary aspects of modern American society, a phenomenon
that bodes ill indeed for the future, is the "we'll save your soul"
mentality of the psychiatric profession. This resembles in a fundamental way
the attitude of the Spanish Inquisition. Some of these horrifying monsters
want to get their icy fingers of control into your mind without any regard
whatsoever for rationality or your moral, ethical, or legal rights.
People with no drinking problem say they have no drinking problem, but
the alcohol-counseling "therapists" say that denial of a problem is the
first indication there is one.
Psychologist Adrian Raine of USC observes that teaching parents more
consistent, less coercive discipline techniques reduces their kids'
misbehavior, and concludes: "We should make parenting skills classes
compulsory for high school students." The idea that "we shall coerce you
into learning how to be non-coercive" is a gruesome self-contradiction.
The next step in this process is to reconceptualize crime as a "disorder"
and explain criminal behavior as the product of "disease" rather than
choice.
For example, C. Ray Jeffery, criminologist at Florida State University,
maintains: "If we are to follow the medical model, we must use neurological
examinations in place of the insanity defense and the concept of guilt.
Criminals must be placed in medical clinics, not prisons."
Diana Fishbein, professor of criminology at the University of Baltimore:
"Treatment should be mandatory. We don't ask offenders whether they want
to be incarcerated or executed. They should remain in a secure facility
until they can show without a doubt that they are self-controlled. They
should be held indefinitely."
Another ghastly example:
"In an unjust society a man may violate laws for valid social or economic
reasons. In a just society there are no valid reasons except mental illness.
Recognizing this fact protects the violator as well as the society whose law
he attacks. It affords the violator an opportunity to be quarantined until
his illness can be expertly treated. Therefore you see how vital it is that
investigators have their own psychological consciousness raised so that they
may detect those subtle signs of the pathology before the deviant has a
chance to violate the law. It is our duty to spare society from injury and
to save a sick man from the consequences of his acts."
This raises the prospect of a tyranny so malevolently vicious as to be
incomprehensible to any sane mind. It is one thing to convict someone of a
crime and then compel them to do something. It is another thing entirely to
seize upon someone who has not done anything wrong and say, "You look like a
high risk, so we will force you to do what we wish." I see an imprisoned
mind frantically blundering from framework to framework, pursued inexorably
by the psychosurgeon with the implements of torture in his hands--a mind
trying to find a framework which the psychiatrist will approve and so
slacken the torture. The psychiatrists call this a return to sanity, but is
it really anything more than a coerced psychopathic attempt to escape from
an insanely impossible situation?
During recent years there has been an explosion of cases in which adult
men and women--most frequently, young women undergoing psychotherapy--have
seemingly remembered childhood sexual abuse that they had forgotten for
years or even decades. Are these memories accurate recollections of terrible
traumas, or artificial phantoms of events that never happened? Have
therapists developed effective new memory-retrieval techniques, or have they
employed misguided procedures that surreptitiously help to create the
memories? Indeed, examinations of the interview techniques used by these
"therapists" reveal many cases of blatantly suggestive lines of inquiry. Are
the patients who recover memories of sexual abuse being empowered to speak
out, or are they being impelled away from the truth and toward a
psychological frame-of-reference that the therapist finds more desirable?
Many therapists have reported on patients who have clearly recalled
savage acts carried out by satanic cults. Yet in most instances, no memories
of ritual brutality existed prior to the therapy, and no one has produced
hard evidence of such acts. Investigations by the FBI of more than 300 such
cases have failed to turn up any proof. These reports include bizarre but
fascinating cases in which people "remember" exceedingly improbable events
such as past lives and alien abductions. Multiple-personalities are often
fabricated in therapy, but just as often, once the patient ends therapy the
memories are retracted and the pseudo-personalities are abandoned. A growing
number of people are renouncing ALL their "recovered" memories.
Some therapists interpret patients' symptoms as "implicit memory"--that
is, nonconscious effects of experience on subsequent behavior and cognition.
They cite this as justification for interpreting their patient's fears,
dislikes or attractions as subconscious "memories" of abuse. Many trauma
therapists infer that a woman who hates bananas is necessarily reacting
subconsciously to a memory of her fathers's erect penis.
In an attempt to buttress this turpitudinal twaddle, some analysts have
proposed something called "robust repression" a special mechanism which
could cause someone to forget completely about years of repeated sexual
trauma. But there is a dearth of scientific evidence that extensive, severe
sexual trauma can be pushed into the subconscious through a mechanism of
memory repression. Validated research indicates that emotionally traumatic
experiences tend to be quite well remembered.
Other practicioners dispense outright with any attempt at rational
justification: On being asked to cite scientific support for her ideas,
Ellen Bass (one of the foremost propounders of the "memory recovery"
movement) replied: "Look, if we waited for scientific knowledge to catch up,
we could just forget the whole thing. My ideas are not based on any
scientific theories."
On the other hand, extensive laboratory research indicates that
suggestion and other factors can lead to profound memory distortion. There
are solid indications that a phenomenon known as source amnesia (in which a
person forgets the source or context in which a memory originated) renders
people vulnerable to induced memory distortions. When people cannot remember
the source of a memory, they are apt to confuse whether it relects an actual
event, a fantasy, or something that was suggested to them. When there are no
external records that you can refer to, even the outline of your own life
loses its sharpness.
Therapy techniques that involve visualizing or imagining abusive
incidents are used as a first step toward inducing remembrance of them. Thus
a therapist who believes in the reality of forgotten abuse can help
"validate" imagined experiences as bonafide memories.
There is no scientific documentation of the efficacy of these techniques
but there is good reason to believe that they pose a danger because they
encourage patients to blur the line between imagination and memory.
The September 1997 issue of SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN contains an essay by
Elizabeth Loftus, the president of the American Psychological Society, on
the subject of implanted memories. She contends that the mechanisms
underlying such false memories are not known. However, Nathaniel Branden, in
his identification of Social Metaphysics, presented an explanation of the
psychological principles underlying this phenomenon over 30 years ago. (see
Chapter 10 of his book THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SELF-ESTEEM.)
In Chapters 8 and 9 of his book, THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD, (Ballantine
Book #345-40946-9) Carl Sagan deals with the unreliability of memory, memory
manipulation, fraud, hallucination and fantasies.
Taken together, these considerations lead inexorably to the conclusion
that some therapists have helped create pseudo-memories of events that never
occurred. If these therapists are causing the same emotional and
psychological trauma as an actual rape or sexual assault, they, like those
who physically victimize people, deserve moral condemnation. I strongly
suspect that those people who are so intensely concerned with getting you to
remember and re-live distressing experiences are not so much concerned with
identifying the experiences as they are with tyrannizing your mind, with
raping your soul. Fundamentally, they are no different from any other kind
of tyrant.
In 1952, Hans Eysenck of the University of London reported the results of
an "outcome-of-therapy" study of neurotics that showed that 44% of the
patients who received psychoanalysis improved; 64% of the patients who
received psychotherapy improved; and 72% of the patients who received no
treatment at all improved.
Studies of antidepressants conducted over the past 30 years showed that
two thirds of the patients placed on medication either showed no improvement
or responded equally well to a placebo as to the antidepressant; drugs
produced significantly superior outcomes in only one third of patients.
In a 1995 conference on Psychoanalytic Theory and Practice, one
participant asked whether a therapist might aid a patient simply by doing or
saying nothing. Another described a patient who began to improve after
deciding to spend her therapy sessions sitting alone in her car in her
therapist's driveway.
At a 1996 convention of the American Psychological Association, these
observations were made:
Freudians cannot point to unambiguous evidence that psychoanalysis works,
but neither can proponents of more modern treatments, whether Jungian
analysis, cognitive-behavioral therapy or even medications. Indeed, claims
about the "wonder drug" Prozac notwithstanding, numerous independent studies
have found that drugs are not significantly more effective than "talking
cures" at treating the most common ailments for which people seek treatment.
These, and similar findings, have never been refuted, and other studies
have confirmed their negative results, no matter what type of therapy was
used. How, in all good conscience, can therapists and psychiatrists continue
to practice? Many patients report more satisfaction with Alcoholics
Anonymous than with any of the mental-health professionals or medications.
That scholars still debate Freud's ideas suggests that the profession's
grasp of the mind is still rather tenuous; after all, experts on infectious
diseases do not debate the validity of Louis Pasteur's ideas.
The theoretical framework within which therapists work has little or
nothing to do with their ability to "heal" patients. That "healing" stems,
rather, from the therapist's ability to make patients BELIEVE they will
improve. In other words the placebo effect is the primary active ingredient
underlying all psychotherapies and even most drug treatments. It is surmised
by some critics that placebo treatments have succeeded simply because they
allow healing while not harming.
To conclude, I would like to comment on a noteworthy exception to the
above dismal account: the work of philosopher-psychologist Nathaniel
Branden. Rather than trying to manipulate your mind, he stresses the
importance of self-responsibility and provides you with the philosophical
and psychological tools by means of which you can do the job YOURSELF. The
ideas he presents show clearly that, although these "tyrants of the mind"
can manipulate uncertainty and self-doubt, they cannot manipulate self-
esteem.
Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined. I told
the last psychiatrist I met that I would make an appointment with him just
as soon as I decided he was saner than I am. From the wall-eyed look he gave
me, I think he considered me to be overdue already.
* The Alternative of Freedom
In early 1991, Mary Margaret Glennie claimed that she had received over
600 inquiries, about half of whom were serious about moving, and that thirty
libertarians had actually taken up her suggestion to move to Fort Collins,
Colorado. Although her idea is, in principle, a good one, I think her
implementation of it is specious. The population of Fort Collins is 88K, a
number hardly likely to be affected by even a large influx of libertarians.
If she could instead get 30 libertarians into Loving County, Texas, they
would constitute a substantial fraction of its population of 107.
I first saw this idea for a "gathering of libertarians" in an essay in
Reason magazine about 1985. That was the only sensible presentation of the
idea that I have ever seen, as it gave an estimate of the potential
political impact of such a gathering on several locales chosen for their low
population. Every one of the numerous subsequent proposals (including Mary
Margaret's) has merely suggested that the gathering should occur at the
location where the author happens to reside! All these people expect
everyone else to bear the inconvenience of relocating--none of them is
serious enough about implementing the proposal to be willing to move
themselves to a location where such a gathering would have political
significance.
I have been watching the "new country" and "libertarian enclave"
movements for many years and have yet to see any of them get off the ground
(or out of the water--with the island-based projects). They have all been
schemes requiring mass participation (such as the Fort Collins proposal): if
they can't enlist thousands (literally!) of libertarians, then their time
and energy are mostly wasted. I think that this has been a major factor in
the failure of these projects, and that if they were focused on individual
participation for personal benefit rather than on mass involvement for
political suasion they would have a much higher probability of success. They
should be arranged in such a way that success does not depend on the number
of participants, and should be set up so that an individual can see a
personal benefit to be gained by participating. No immediate personal
benefit would ensue to me from moving to Fort Collins--that's why I won't do
it, and that's why that project will never get off the ground: few others
will do it either.
It's really an unfortunate waste--if the advocates were to devote their
energy to freeing THEMSELVES as individuals they would no doubt achieve
considerable success, but they're wasting their lives in futile attempts to
"free the world." I don't believe a thousand people are required--or 200--or
even 20. If there were just TWO people in this country who really wanted to
be free they would find each other, and profit from a mutual association.
The LP has been presented to the American people continually since 1972,
but never has it gained the support of more than a tiny fraction of the
general electorate. As of July 1995 the LP has fewer than 20K members and
has only about 140 people holding elected office. This represents about one
one-hundredth of a percent of the elected officials in America, yet the LP
hypes it as a significant success.
It has been argued that untapped support for the LP lies in the 50+% of
the population that does not participate in politics, but the Australian
experience belies this. The LP has made no more headway in Australia than in
the USA.
Leonard Peikoff claims there is still time and opportunity to save
America: "The American spirit has not yet been destroyed.... There is only
one antidote to today's trend: a new, pro-reason philosophy." He does not
mention the history of the Libertarian movement during the 1970s, when a
new, pro-reason philosophy was indeed presented to the American people. They
turned it down.
David Kelley makes the same error, claiming that the American body
politic is "a public that is hungry for values."
If, as Kelley believes, the public is hungry for values, I wonder how he
would explain that public's enormous rejection of the LP.
(Neither Peikoff nor Kelley are libertarians. What they advocate is
merely a variant of political conservatism.)
What would it take to convince these men that the American voters do not
want a libertarian alternative?
In any case, after 1980, vote-getting gained ascendancy over
philosophical vision, and the LP became so involved in electoral politics
that its principles were completely compromised. By 1990 the Libertarian
movement and the LP had been so co-opted and corrupted by political
conservatives that neither had any consistent pro-reason presentation to
make any longer.
Consider an alcoholic who has been drinking a quart of whiskey every day
for decades. It is not now possible for the alcoholic to come into
possession of the health that he would have had in other circumstances. It
doesn't matter at all if he now swears off whiskey and takes up gin or vodka
instead--these choices would simply continue him along his path into
physical degeneracy. His only hope for any health, or even partial recovery
in his old age, would be to swear off alcohol altogether.
I view American society as being similar to that alcoholic. The
accumulated effects of government (effects which are increasing in intensity
at an exponential rate) are reducing society to a state of degeneracy
similar in malignancy to that of the alcoholic. No matter how much you may
want to, you cannot grow into a decent human being while drinking a quart of
whiskey every day. No matter how much you may want them to, your children
cannot grow into decent human beings while living within the context of the
forfeiture laws and the Internal Revenue Service.
Society can no more save itself by implementing a different kind of
government than the alcoholic can save himself by drinking a different kind
of alcohol. Society's only salvation lies in the total abolition of
government.
In this respect Rand was correct: you cannot have a political change
without a preexisting philosophical change. But here too I believe there is
no hope. The prevalence of Newspeak and the decline in intellectual caliber
of the general population precludes the adoption of the philosophical
sensibility that is prerequisite to the restructuring of society.
As an individualist, I seek ways to implement changes that are not
dependent on mass philosophical conversions or mass political persuasion. I
believe that only through individual personal behavior can major cultural
transformation occur. The opportunity to make political changes was lost
when the LP became merely another branch of conservatism.
From this perspective, I view myself as living in a world which is
endemically afflicted with scurvy: Any individual who chooses to do so can
readily alleviate his own situation merely by drinking a glass of orange
juice daily. It is not at all necessary for him to convince the entire
world, or even any other person, to change its nature.
Objectivism is an individualist philosophy. It provides an eminently
practical technology for individual enlightenment and growth, and it will
benefit any individual who chooses to live by its principles. Try it and
see. I have.
* Cultural Value-deprivation
Rand describes the sensory-deprivation experiments, and then carries this
notion further, to the idea of conceptual deprivation, observing that
today's individual lives in an intellectual desert--in the equivalent of an
experimental cubicle the size of a continent--where he is given the sensory
overload of screeching, screaming, jostling media assaults, but is cut off
from ideas. If severe enough and prolonged enough, such a distortion of the
natural, active flow of cognitive experiences may paralyze a man's
consciousness by telling him that no significant thinking is possible. This
chronic deprivation produces a gradual erosion of his emotional vitality,
which is recorded and preserved by his subconscious, until the day when his
inner motor stops and he finds himself with no desire to go on living. If a
person is deprived of his values, he will eventually have little or nothing
to live for. When Muslim fanatics refer to the "soulless" West, they are
literally correct. When people have been value-deprived they are thereby
soul-deprived.
Another aspect of this conceptual deprivation process is what might be
called principle extinction--the process by which people's ability to think
and act on the basis of principles is extinguished.
Visual agnosia is a condition in which the visual association cortex has
been injured, resulting in the victim's inability to perceive the world as a
whole picture. He sees only bits at a time and has lost the ability to
recognize patterns. He is, in effect, a visual illiterate. A closely
analogous effect results from the destruction of his ability to think in
principles. Then he will be able to perceive only specific concrete
instances of reality. He will have lost the ability to recognize the
underlying patterns. Perhaps we could call this "cognitive agnosia." (See
the Spurious Superficiality fallacy.)
Americans are taught NOT to think in principles, and then--just to make
sure they are thoroughly corrupt--they are given principles that are
depraved. Victims of cultural value deprivation can easily be persuaded to
attach "value" to things which are in fact valueless. Newspeak goes even
further, by distorting the very concepts used to formulate principles.
People deprived of their ability to formulate values will trash their
civilization with very little incentive. As a consequence of being value-
deprived and value-depraved they become value-destructive.
In the long run, a tyrannical society is possible only on the basis of
cognitive deprivation. So long as people are not permitted to have standards
of comparison they never even become aware that they are oppressed. (This
may explain the widespread manifestation of the Fallacy of Relative
Privation.)
Value deprivation means not only the absence of positive values, and the
actions taken to achieve them, it also means the absence of any effective
actions taken to combat a negative. People lose any impulse to rebel against
tyranny since, lacking a principled basis for judgments, they are bereft of
any way to decide who their real enemies are. Thus the mad bombers--people
driven over the edge of insanity by the contradictions they endure, but
lacking a means of directing their rage toward an appropriate target. Thus
also the widespread apathy we see in American society: many people, losing
values and principles, also lose the power of grasping that the world could
be other than it is.
They can be granted intellectual liberty, because they no longer possess
intellect. They can be made to accept the most flagrant violations of
reality, because they never fully grasp the enormity of what is being
perpetrated upon them. They remain sane, in part, by lack of understanding--
in a sort of protective stupidity. The more intelligent they are, the less
sane they must be. The prevailing mental condition must be one of controlled
insanity. But sanity is not arbitrary. Rulers of all ages have tried to
impose a false view of the world upon their subjects, but they cannot afford
to encourage any illusion that impairs military efficiency. In philosophy,
religion, ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one is
designing a gun or a bomb they HAVE to make four. War is the main instrument
by which governments are kept in touch with physical reality.
This thesis has great significance for modern America, not so much as it
applies to war, but as it applies to technology. We live in a society that
is entirely dependent on advanced technology. If any major aspect of that
technology is not sufficiently maintained, our entire civilization may well
collapse.
There are many people for whom work is the primary touch with reality.
When important functions, such as personal autonomy and perception of
accomplishment are removed from their work the result is impaired contact
with reality, and a consequent decrease in their job performance. We can see
the results in automotive recalls, on Three Mile Island, and other
indications that the technological underpinnings of our civilization are
eroding.
How can you protect yourself against these negative influences? Simply
make yourself into a value-activist.
The hallmarks of a value-activist:
He has a firmly identified set of values. He knows what he wants.
He arranges his values in a hierarchy. Not necessarily cardinal, but
ordinal: greater values and lesser values.
He understands that he must ACT to achieve his values.
He is the man with a purpose.
When considering value-deprivation vs. value-activism, remember that
there are categories of values: social values, practical values,
recreational values, etc. A person might be afflicted with value-deprivation
in only some of these categories and not in others.
* Inheritance
The best of mankind's youth start out in life seeking a noble vision of
man's nature and of life's potential. It is not even an explicit view for
most of them, but an undefined sense of enormous expectation, the sense that
one's life is important, that great achievements are within one's capacity,
and that wonderful things lie ahead. Then all of these hopes vanish in the
vast swamp of a culture which tells them persistently that maturity consists
of abandoning one's mind; security, of abandoning one's values;
practicality, of abandoning one's self-esteem. The children soon learn to
detach themselves from their noble emotions, but in the process they lose a
large part of their capacity to feel ANY emotions.
Some who cannot dispense with their natural sensitivity turn to suicide:
they see too clearly what sort of existence awaits them and, being too young
to find an antidote, they cannot tolerate the prospect. If a young person
sees no real future to look forward to, his choices may well resemble those
of a terminally ill person.
Others become so insensitive to pain--theirs and other's--that we hear of
sensational, coldblooded crimes being done by children and youths.
People who cannot control their own lives feel either despair or
rebellious frustration. This is the situation of the youth of America.
You must remember that morality and ethics are NOT instincts! They are
LEARNED phenomena.
Here is a letter printed in the Casper (Wyoming) Star Tribune, Sept.,
1988:
"I would like to thank the Natrona County Sheriff's Office, and
particularly McGruff the Crime Dog, for recently visiting my day-care home
and presenting their program 'Stranger Danger.' The children enjoyed the
visit and McGruff helped the children understand the importance of staying
away from strangers."
Most people believe this sort of thing is commendable, even necessary for
the safety of their children. And within the context of the violent society
we live in, it is indeed desirable to alert one's children to potential
danger.
But consider the inevitable result of this sort of training: In March,
1964, 38 witnesses watched from windows in surrounding apartment buildings
as Kitty Genovese was murdered on the street outside, but none of them did
anything at all to help. And everyone wonders why, but the answer is quite
simple: from nursery school to adulthood they have been trained to avoid
strangers. On their TV sets, from prime-time dramas to live coverage of the
Vietnam War, they watch strangers suffer and they remain passive observers.
Viktor E. Frankl, in MAN'S SEARCH FOR MEANING states: "At first the
prisoner looked away if he saw the punishment parades of another group; he
could not bear to see fellow prisoners march up and down for hours in the
mire, their movements directed by blows. Days or weeks later things
changed....the prisoner who had passed into the second stage of his
psychological reactions did not avert his eyes any more. By then his
feelings were blunted, and he watched unmoved.... Disgust, horror and pity
are emotions that our spectator could not really feel any more. The
sufferers, the dying and the dead, became such commonplace sights to him
after a few weeks of camp life that they could not move him any more."
Here is a sociologist's description of a family living in an American
inner-city ghetto:
"They had got used to the sound of gunfire. Everyone heard shots from
time to time. After the first few occasions they had become curiously
indifferent to them. Whoever was speaking would pause, then continue when
the shooting stopped, just as he might when a jet aircraft passed overhead.
It was as if they could not imagine that shots might be aimed at THEM.
Surely, they were telling themselves, if we just lie low and hang on, the
trouble will blow over."
Just as one can, in the field of economics, analyze the "logic of
choice," so one can focus on the "logic of coercion"--on the unintended but
entirely predictable results of dishonesty and violence. And it need not be
"real" violence. If you spend all your childhood and adult life watching the
violence on TV, you may begin to believe that the normal, the usual, the
only method of dealing with any sort of distress is to start drawing pistols
and killing people, or calling on the government to do the coercing for you.
Defenders of TV violence argue that anyone can distinguish between
television and reality. But Saturday morning children's programs now (in
1995) average 25 acts of violence per hour. At the very least this
desensitizes young children to aggression and random cruelty. And if
impressionable adults can so easily have false memories implanted in their
minds, what is being implanted in our children when they are exposed to tens
of thousands of acts of violence even before they graduate from elementary
school?
The child knows no other way of life than the slave's way. Born free, he
has been laid hands on from the moment of his birth and brought up as a
slave. How is he, when he is at last "set free," to be anything else than
the slave he actually is? Clamoring for war, for the lash, for police,
prisons, and scaffolds in a wild panic of delusion that without these things
he is lost.
You cannot govern men brought up as slaves otherwise than as slaves are
governed. Nor can you expect them to behave in any other way than as slaves
and barbarians. In school, misbehaving students are punished for a host of
reasons--but adults in positions of authority (i.e., school administrators)
initiated force against them to make them go to school in the first place.
The discipline system the students have been immersed in is basically
contradictory. When a child sees this kind of irrationality
institutionalized in his social environment, what does this do to his sense
of ethical values? Blaming the children for their misbehavior is unjust. The
experience inflicted upon them has taught them that what they are doing is
an acceptable way of living in this society. They have been enslaved and
subjected to torment. Now they strike back and subject others to torment.
Since they have been taught, and believe, that causes do not necessarily
have subsequent effects, they are not able to perceive the real cause of
their torment. Thus they cannot identify the justified target of their
anger. They vent their anger indiscriminantly, treating people, as
representatives of society, in the same way that "society" has treated them.
Calling the students animals is unforgivable; it's an insult to animals.
Animals generally behave quite rationally, but there is very little rational
behavior in a public school. I prefer to call the students barbarians.
However, this does great injustice to some of the students. Although there
are many children who would be gentle and civilized individuals, they must
cope as best they can with their irrational environment, which means many of
them finally relent and join the barbarians. The moral and intellectual rot
spreads and is handed down as, in several years, these barbarians begin to
take part in community activities (what will happen when they get on the
Board of Education?) and teach THEIR children the values they have learned.
Thus viciousness becomes embedded in the structure of society.
This, I believe, is the basic cause of the decline in American education.
The system is fundamentally self-contradictory and thus fundamentally self-
destructive. And since causes do inevitably have subsequent effects, those
effects are what we are seeing manifested in the schools today.
What schools mostly do is practice rigid age segregation, socialize
children into narrow roles, label them into limiting categories, create
meaningless problems, compel obedience and compliance above all other
virtues, teach that life is segmented by ringing bells, and deeply
indoctrinate children with the profound belief that government is an
absolute necessity for civilization. School is the first coercive
institution most of us endure, and it wears down our resistance to the later
ones. It makes them seem normal.
Sure, there are good and decent teachers, but the abstract logic of the
institution drowns their individual decency in a sea of wickedness.
One can understand why the contradictions of our society weigh so heavily
on the young: no sane mind can integrate the contrast between the
righteousness of a Secretary of State and the ruthlessness of a B-52;
between the sanctimony of "a kinder, gentler, America" and the savagery of
the Los Angeles Police beating Rodney King; between the notion that violence
is fine against people 10000 miles away but shocking against injustice in
our own land; between the equality demanded by America's Constitution and
the equality denied by America's political structure; even between the
accepted habits of one generation and the emerging habits of the next, as
when a parent tipsy on his fourth martini begins a tirade against his son's
marijuana.
The generation that's growing up today has been thoroughly brutalized by
the system. It's in their schools, their media, their political ideology--
everywhere. They're conditioned to the worship of violence and the statist
cult--to view the power and strength of the State as the only criteria for
establishing right. A nation settled by men who refused to uncover in the
presence of kings is now populated by people who grovel before petty
bureaucrats--and are proud of doing it.
One of the things that makes us so different from other animals is our
ability to pass on to our children the sum total of what we and our parents
have accomplished. That legacy of accomplishments--intellectual, artistic,
spiritual, and material--is the content of human culture. To the extent that
a society inhibits the transfer of this legacy, it is dooming its children
to stagnation or retrogression. Even worse is the future of a society that
transfers to its youth a legacy of ignorance and brutality.
"We will descend into a new Dark Age, made more sinister by the lights of
perverted science." ... Churchill
* Conservation - Environmentalism
Conservation is not synonymous with any lessening of one's standard of
living. It is synonymous with more wealth, power, and freedom. The idea is
not to make do with less civilization. The idea is to do all the things you
are doing now--heat your house, cook your food, drive your car--using fewer
resources. More efficient heaters and more efficient cars mean cleaner air,
better health and greater prosperity.
Many environmentalists assert a significant distinction between consuming
or conserving one's resources, but the important distinction to make is
between two forms of resource consumption: dissipation or production. Mere
conservation is economically irrelevant--to conserve something rather than
to use it makes no contribution to prosperity. A sensible approach to the
subject of human well-being is to USE resources, but in such a way that they
are augmented or regenerated as much as possible (and thus, in a manner of
speaking, "conserved" for future use) and in such a way that their present
use PRODUCES future well-being. The real crime in this context is to
destructively dissipate resources in order to achieve only a transient
benefit. Perhaps the best example of this process is the gluttonous
dissipation of the world's supply of fossil fuels, much of which is consumed
for no other purpose than to transport imbecilic adolescents back and forth
from one end of Main Street to the other. (But even this is insignificant
when compared with the amount of the world's resources that are poured into
the enterprise of War.) A sane practice would be to use the fossil fuels, to
as great an extent as necessary, for the purpose of establishing a nuclear
fusion or solar power technology.
The tiny pockets of energy that happen to be trapped in one form or
another about the surface of our planet represent man's starting capital.
Future generations will look back at our behavior and ask if we used them as
the down payment on good long-term investments, or squandered them on the
immediate gratification of our whims.
Here are some comments by a Randite:
"I see nothing unnatural about man's activities. It's called natural when
beavers dam a stream, flood a valley, and change the ecosystem, but not when
men do the same thing. This distinction is false. From the time men
discovered that they could keep warm by wearing animal skins, to the
cultivation of crops and the domestication of animals, to today's
skyscrapers, man has flourished by adapting his environment to himself. It's
our method of survival, and it's just as natural for us as it is for cats to
prey upon mice. What inclines me to doubt the sanity of many
environmentalists is their insistence on reading human life out of the rest
of nature. As if we were not natural, did not belong with the rest of the
world--Indeed, as if we had been dumped into reality by some runaway dump
truck disposing of unnatural trash. The plain fact is that we are every bit
as natural as are snail darters, spotted owls or wetlands. This means that
housing developments, too, are part of nature. As are high rise buildings,
bridges, freeways, parking lots, dams and disposable diapers, and even
nuclear waste. What a natural being does is by definition natural. When a
zebra is destroyed by a lion, this isn't depicted as the sad demise of some
natural thing at the hands of an alien, unnatural force."
Of course it is "natural" for man to build homes, provide for his needs,
and to produce waste. These are inevitable concomitants of the life process.
But there is another "natural" attribute of man which, if not taken into
consideration, results in a grossly distorted and inaccurate analysis of
man's relationship to his environment. That is the attribute of "choice."
I do not at all have an "insistence on reading human life out of the rest
of nature" what I do insist on is identifying the proper relationship
between human beings and the ecology in which we live. After all, the beaver
doesn't really have much (or any) choice about his dam-building activities.
But man DOES have a choice about such things as the puddle of slag beneath
Chernobyl, the toxic waste dumps in New Jersey that poison his unborn
generations, and the combustion of the Cuyahoga river. I do not regard any
of these three phenomena (and many more I could specify) as being "Natural."
"Natural" for man is to make the environment better--because he has the
CHOICE to do so. There is nothing "better" about the slag puddle and the
poisonous waste dumps. Does that jerk really think the Cuyahoga river is
better when it burns? That was not natural. Nothing that makes the world
unliveable for our descendents is natural, and making it so is a form of
social suicide. If he thinks suicide is natural, let him start with himself.
"The creation of positive personal and global change through the natural
energies found in each of us and in the earth" is the best definition I have
ever encountered of what I think "Environmentalism" SHOULD be.
There is no such thing as a balance of nature. The world of nature is
continually in flux, and it is up to man, with his power of choice, to
control the direction and nature of that flux.
As long as we share a planet with the hydrogen bomb, human beings, too,
are an endangered species.
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